FicWad

Chapter 2
An Unwanted Recitation
A couple hours later
"I'm glad you and your siblings cam here today Sara."
"Thanks Mr. Brandon, but it's a necessity." Sara responds.
"That has been covered before." he sighs. "Being principle of an elementary school is a big job. Finding someone to explain the Family to a bunch of kindergartners would be hard to do properly without using a member of the Family would be exhaustive."
"It's really our pleasure." Says a middle aged man stepping into the office and closing the door behind him.
"Ah John, nice job in Mr. Robinson's class. Although I could have done with less broken furniture." Laughs the Principle.
"I apologize about the desk. When the class started climbing all over me, I had to sit on something." Apologizes Sara's brother.
Sara turns to face him and plants her hands on her hips and scrutinizes him. "You didn't hurt any of them did you?"
"For a second I thought I had hurt the one that crawled between my legs and tripped me to begin with, but he's fine. The only things we hurt were the desk and my rump."
The Mr. Brandon changes the subject. "Where is your elder brother?"
"Already left, said something about Atlanta." Sara answers him. "He did say for me to tell you thanks for the opportunity though."
"That's good to know and I should be thanking you and your family for this wonderful opportunity. But I have a question for the both of you."
"What would that be Mr. Brandon?" Answers John with a curious tone.
"If you don't mind my asking, I would like to know why the Family does this introduction every spring." The principle asks awkwardly.
Sara pipes in immediately, "It's a loong, depressing story sir. You wouldn't want to hear it." She turns around and faces away from the principle.
"He has a right to know Sara." Her brother admonishes sadly.
"Then you tell him. I don't want to."
The tension builds in the room. The principle looks between the two of them. He says, "If it is something that neither of you want to say, you don't have to."
"Yes but it has much to do with why we do this visit to the children here every year." Says John, looking at Sara's back.
Sara walks across the office to an open chair in the corner and sits down. She looks up at the ceiling, and addresses her blue-eyed brother. "Just tell him."
"Okay. I will." John turns toward Mr. Brandon. "Around sixteen years ago-"
"Seventeen next April." Sara interrupts with a distant voice without looking down from the ceiling. A long pause follows.
Clearing his throat, John continues as if nothing had happened. "Close to seventeen years ago, on of the local Family, our mother, had just given birth." he coughs again and Mr. Brandon flicks his eyes towards Sara, who seems to be very interested in something on the ceiling above her.
"That was before I was transferred here to be the principle."
"Which is probably why you don't know about any of this. Anyway our mother had not survived the birthing process. And she was two hundred and seven years old so she wouldn't have lived many more years afterward anyway. Our Father had already passed away at two hundred and forty three maybe half-way through the pregnancy. It is very rare that a born female member of the Family has four children, but she did and the diagnosis was that her body couldn't handle a fourth."
Mr. Brandon leans forward in his chair. "How unfortunate."
"Indeed. None of us hold any grievances towards Sara for what happened nor is this the majority of the problem." He turns towards a window in the room. Takes a deep breath, and then glances towards Sara, whose eyes were still only for the ceiling. "If you don't want to have this rehashed for you again, you don't have to be here."
She answers in a flat tone. "Not that I have a choice."
"Why would you say that?" asks Mr. Brandon.
"John knows just as well as I do the meaning of appearances. You seeing how much difficulty I am having listening to this again helps get the point across on how wrapped up we are in needing to appear human. If we don't do everything we can to make people care for us, even to the point of kissing their feet, we don't want to have repeated what happened in this story. And even still it doesn't work on everyone. So, yet again, I must listen to this particular bit of history." She takes in a deep breath and lets it out in a huff.
"Now our mother made the choice to birth Sara on the mainland, instead of on the island, at a close friend's home. Her friend was a licensed midwife so who better to deliver her last child than her closest friend who does this kind of thing for a living." John starts to pace, his arms clasped behind his back. What we, the Family, didn't know was that word had gotten out about the Family and about what we are. Or could be. A bunch of fools put what they thought was two and two together and came up with seven. Do you understand Mr. Brandon?"
"I'll take a stab at it but they got hyped up on the possibility of a vampire coven in this town right?"
"Exactly. They also heard that one of them was in the final weeks of pregnancy. And then they got caught up in Hollywood fantasy and thought that a super vampire would be born or something. Around twelve men got together and collected a whole bunch of useless junk to fight vampires, and some not so useless firearms. All the classical vampire killing stuff: garlic, steaks, silver knives, holy crosses, UV lamps, bunches of useless stuff."
"But where did they get the confirmation to these rumors?"
"In a nutshell, they heard through the rumor mill from locals here that we lived for many times longer than normal humans, that we were faster and stronger than other people, and that we kept this town a safe, drug and crime free environment. They figured the 'great protectors' thing was a sham and was a cover up as we preyed on the unsuspecting victims of the local populace. They needed to 'liberate' these poor people from the vampire menace." States Sara in a flat voice.
John turns his shoulders so he can look at Sara and the principle leans his head so he can see Sara better from around John, a concerned look on both their faces. John continues. "Yes Sara, in a nutshell, that is what they intended on doing. They came from one of the farming communities surrounding the lake to where they thought was the closest to the source of the evil menace, which was one town over from here." His eyes are still on Sara. "They came across a man who had married into the Family through one of our younger aunts and coerced him for information."
"What did they do to the man?" questions Mr. Brandon.
"First they got him drunk, hoping he'd let something slip." John turns away from Sara and seats himself in a nearby chair in front of Mr. Brandon's desk. "After that didn't work, they dragged the poor man out of the bar they were in, attempted to drug him and drag the information out of him, then beat him almost senseless until the man talked. The assailants hadn't intended on killing the poor man but they had put so many drugs in his system that he was going to die anyway. So on their way to this town they chucked his body out of one of the trucks they were driving while crossing a bridge. It was the fall to the bottom of the ravine and onto the rocks that finally killed the man but he was beyond feeling it at that point."
"How terrible." says the now shocked principle.
"This story isn't even begun to get bad."
"Sara. Calm down."
"I'm just stating a fact John."
"Before the man died, he told them of where our Family lived. Here, in Willow Creek. Second, he confirmed that one of us was pregnant. Third of which she was in labor. So these men drove into town and asked a few people where the birthing was being done, in the hopes of stopping the 'monstrosity' from being born."
"This has something to do with that shooting spree that was on the news way back then doesn't it?" Mr. Brandon asks, dreading the answer. He adjusts his name plate on his desk.
"You are correct, although the news was changed enough that the Family was excluded from the media." Sara responds to the ceiling.
"Do you wish to finish it Sara?" asks John nicely.
"Why would I want to do that?"
"You get awfully knit-picky at this point if you're within earshot."
"Oh nooo," she says sarcastically, "you're doing a wonderful job as is."
"Really, if you don't want me to hear this-" Mr. Brandon stops when John holds up a finger.
"You are going to have to learn at some point. And Sara, if you continue to pitch a fit like a child, I'll make you tell it." Her brother reprimands her kindly. "And can you please give the principal is name plate back?" Mr. Brandon looks down at his desk. His name plate isn't there anymore. He looks up and Sara has it in her hand, spinning it around her hand in a blur.
"Now that is amazing. I never even saw you get up."
Sara says in a subdued voice, "Thanks I guess." She stands up and replaces it on his desk where she got it from.
"Continuing from where I left off, these hooligans made it into town at around six in the morning, and by blending in with the crowd, asked a few questions and figured out where our mother was. At this point she was in the last point of labor and had been in it for a couple days or so."
"That's a long time." says the principle. He takes a sip of coffee from a mug on his desk. His eyes flick a little wider and he puts the mug down in a hurry. "Oh that is hot! Oh, do either of you two need anything? We have a small fridge in the lobby out there I could have my aid get a water or an apple if you want it."
"No tha-..." he pauses a second.
"Sir, I don't think you should have mentioned apples around John." Sara smiles finally, relieved at the break in the story.
"Do you not like apples?"
"Depends. Do you have any Yellow Delicious?" John says hopefully.
"I think there's a small bag of them in the fridge in the lounge. I'll call my aid to get some."
John looks around for a second, and then almost faster than Mr. Brandon could follow, John moves out of the room then back in again carrying the bag of apples with a sheepish look on his face. Sara scolds him and he scolds back that she'd do the same thing for some cherries.
"Do you mind if I eat a couple of these?" John asks Mr. Brandon.
"Go ahead. Those were left-over's from a faculty meeting."
"Thank you."
"Do you want anything Sara?"
"No I'm fine, I'm going out to eat after this and I want my money's worth."
"Anyway," John says as he munches on an apple. "Before we have further interruptions, these men had one last meeting between them to work up their courage and religious fervor, making them believe that they were going to be heroes, and came to the home that our mother was in. Well they had mucked around town for maybe three hours working up the courage to go and 'kill the vamps' as they put it." He takes a pause to take another bite of apple. "At this point in time, our mother had already passed on, with her all her children and friends being present to say goodbyes. She had only lived long enough to name Sara and that was basically it, but it was still sad."
"After staying there for around an hour with mother, John, Marie, and Eric had left to go back home and deliver the news to the rest of the Family, leaving me behind." says Sara. "It is a well ground in tradition in the Family that life is sacred, especially new life, because our family reproduces very infrequently. Because of this, there is a bit of ceremony involved with newborn children. The child will stay with the mother at the spot where he or she was born if it wasn't in the place where the Family was living until the mother is strong enough herself to carry the child to her home, where the patriarch or matriarch of the Family will take the child at the entrance of the home and carry the child to his or her crib." She says and takes in a large breath.
The principle remarks "Wow. That is a lot to get out at once."
"Although there are situations where this can't be done the same way. Like if in this case the mother dies in childbirth then the patriarch immediately comes and retrieves the baby from wherever it is born at and the ceremony continues from there." Fills in John. "Or if the area that the child is born in is dangerous or the child may be at risk then the child is moved immediately."
"I see. So you and your siblings had left to go get your patriarch right?"
"Yes we had. So we had left maybe a half hour to an hour before the vampire slayers had arrived there. They busted in, took all five people in the home hostage, and discovered the 'demon child' had already been born. But the mother was dead and they celebrated as if they had been the ones that killed her." He sighs, takes another bite of apple and mutters, "The ignorance of fools." he stops muttering. "They decide that they want to call the Family and make demands because they had one of us hostage but were amazed that we didn't have a telephone out on the island."
Sara laughs at this. "They apparently started saying that we were primitive beasts if we didn't use modern technology. And they still were in their own little fantasy even when several of their hostages told them that the only reason why we don't have a telephone out there is because at the time no one could figure out how to get a line so far out on the water without it costing us a mortgage on our homes."
John rolls his eyes and agrees with Sara while Mr. Brandon chuckles to himself. John continues. "They began to get frustrated as they tried to figure out who they were going to get there demands to the family without having to send one of their own or one of their precious hostages as a runner, but ended up having to send a hostage anyway. They picked the teenage daughter of the midwife and wrote down a list of demands and sent her to chase after us before we got over to the island."
"Why didn't they just call the police and make their demands through them?" questions Mr. Brandon.
"They didn't want police involvement. They believed the local law enforcement was in our pocket and they didn't want to have to kill innocent humans." Sara says, as she folds herself down into the chair again, a sad look creeping into her eyes.
"Luckily for the girl, we had told the people in the house before we had left that we were going to walk to the pier instead of driving there so we could think out what to say to our grandfather, the patriarch. This girl runs off towards the pier to catch us before we get on the boat to go back over. The whole time she is screaming out what happened. She gets a ride from a stranger and they speed off to the pier, leaving behind at least a hundred people in a suburban neighborhood dialing the police or forming a mob outside the house where Sara was." John's ears prick up and her turns towards Sara. "You might want to loosen your grip; I can hear the chair complaining from here."
Sara's hands are dug into the arms of the chair, she looks down and finally notices what she is doing and lets go of the chair, leaving marks where her fingers had been in the chair. "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't know I was doing that." she apologizes and places her hands in her lap. She starts to twiddle her thumbs to work off the nervous energy.
Mr. Brandon asks what they wanted. John shakes his head and stalls talking by taking another big bite of apple. "They wanted 'our head vampire' to surrender himself in exchange for the girl. They hoped that if they killed him then the rest of us would die with him and if that didn't work then they would have killed their most powerful adversary, which neither of these is true." John makes an exasperated sigh.
"These people really didn't know what they were doing did they?"
"No they didn't." John replies to the principles question.
"They even dressed up partly like Van Helsing." points out Sara. "They had on cowboy hats and those long overcoats with the many inside pockets and had garlic and other stuff strapped to their chests."
"You can't be serious." remarks Mr. Brandon in shock. He leans back in his chair.
"It's true. I saw the aftermath myself." says John in Confirmation. "But we didn't see them until maybe an hour or so after they had first started making trouble. The woman with the message finally found the three of us as we had made it to the docks, where one of our uncles was taking us across to deliver the news. I can still remember the car almost plowing into the small dock we were walking onto and the girl falling out of the passenger side door sobbing her eyes out and trying to explain what was happening through sobs." John puts the paper bag of apples down and opens his mouth to say something else, looks down at the now half empty bag of apples and grabs another apple and starts eating it. "When she finally gets out what is wrong, our uncle, who was the eldest there and so has superior rank, orders me to go across the water as fast as possible and inform the rest of the family. Our sister, brother, and uncle would go and see what they could do immediately and the other Family members should try and catch up to them when they came across the water. I wish that I had been able to go along with them though. I wasn't as fast of runners as those three were and that particular uncle is the strongest Family member in the Blue Eyed Family. He once cut down a hundred and fifty year old tree with his fist." Mr. Brandon gives him a questioning look as a responce.
Sara answers for him. "He was drunk and someone he didn't know who was also said it wasn't possible. Uncle Gerhard broke his fist up pretty bad and hasn't gotten drunk since."
"Anyway, I am not very strong or fast, so I would slow the others down as they tried to chase after these men. I left to go over the water and the others started to race back the house." John finishes the apple and sticks it with the other apple cores in the bottom of the bag and continues. "By this time, there was a very big crowd surrounding the front yard of the house and a lot of police officers in swat outfit all over the place. I believe they were trying to bring in all the police in the district but not everyone had arrived yet. The police where trying to talk to them and get them to come out but all they would get back is that they would only deal with the vampires and that they would save them from the evil that has taken this place over. They just made themselves look like mental ward escapees with the nonsense they were spewing out."
"And then things got really bad for everyone." Says Sara.
"How can it get worse?" asks Mr. Brandon surprised.
"Oh easily seeing how stupid these men were." Sara rolls her head over to look at the principal. "They couldn't tie a knot worth their life. They had tried to keep the hostages tied up in the living room, but one got loose and untied everyone. They crawled through a window and made a break for the crowd before the men inside noticed. Three people had made it out of the window and two were still inside when the morons stopped them from going out the window. The other three ran and the idiots inside started shooting at them with the crowd on the other side of the three runners."
"How many people were hurt?"
John answers Mr. Brandon. "Five people, including one of the hostages. She was the midwife that had helped birth Sara, and actually had Sara being handed into her arms when the man handing Sara through the window was pulled back. She turned and ran and the woman who had pulled the man back shot at her and hit the midwife in the shoulder halfway across the divide between the house and the crowd. She didn't die but she feinted."
"That went over spectacularly with the crowd." Sara replies sarcastically. "And the police were forced to rush the house just to get the midwife out of there and to an ambulance. The idiots inside were too stupid to give up and they pushed the police back away from the house." Sara stands up and continues talking. "They finally got the idea that maybe they were over their heads here, so they tried to run with the hostages out the back. They couldn't get the two men they had as hostage to go over the back fence so they left them and kept me with them. At this point there was only like five of them or so because either the others had given up or were hurt and couldn't continue on. They ditched the coats and hats and dropped most of the stuff they were still holding onto that would give them away and snuck off, managing to evade the police somehow. Eric, Marie, and Uncle Gerhard arrive at the house at this point and get an update from the police and they followed after them."
"How could they follow them? The police couldn't find them."
"One of the things the Family doesn't profess as often as our other heightened senses are our sense of smell." Sara informs him. "Certain members of the Family can smell out scents that are stronger than others. Nowhere near as good at smelling as a dog can, but things like sweat and blood we can smell. And not in the sense of a vampire being able to smell out an innocent's blood either. These five or so remaining people had at least one person who was sweating like a pig and I had not been completely washed off after I had been born so I still had the smell of our mother on me."
"Oh I see. That would have been awkward if it was the other way." Mr. Brandon sighs.
"As Sara had mentioned, we don't have nearly the smelling capabilities of a dog, even among those few Family who are the best at it. Marie had a pretty good nose and Eric almost as good so they spent a good while smelling around trying to find them. When they finally caught up with the five kidnappers, they had made it to the edge of town. They had holed up someones summer home by the shoreline. They saw the three of them coming and literally sniffing around the edge of the road wearing dark sunglasses and it doesn't take much of a genius to realize who they were searching for or who the searchers were."
Sara makes a small laugh. "They tried to shoot at them from a good fifty yards away into a copse of trees. We may be very fast but not very many of the Family are able to dodge bullets, especially several in a row, but even a human wouldn't have trouble dodging bullets in a stand of trees if the people shooting at them can't aim."
John continues the story from there. "Eric, Marie, and Uncle Gerhard move their way to the edge of the trees twenty or thirty feet from the building and the people in the building start to threaten to kill Sara if they come any closer. Uncle steps out from around a tree far enough for them to get a look at how big of a man he is, and he looks like a professional weight lifter. He threatens back that if they hurt Sara he would personally make sure that they would suffer for the rest of their lives."
"That is not what I heard him say he said to them John." Sara says a little less sadly and a little more coyly.
"I'm going for a censored version Sara. I wouldn't say what he actually said. It's like to burn his eyelashes off."
"It doesn't matter to me if you tell me what he said exactly. I get what he was saying right then." Mr. Brandon points out in an attempt to stay on topic.
"Anyway, the people inside take offense to being threatened like they were, so they start yelling insults back. Marie gets fed up with the yelling going on between her uncle and the people that had taken our sister and steps fully out of cover and pleads with them to release Sara." continues John as if nothing had happened. "They laugh at her and start yelling insults at her. So Marie starts asking what they want in exchange for Sara, offering herself in exchange, and the building the kidnappers where in falls silent for a few minutes, and then they start restating all their ridiculous demands from before, but most specifically the 'head vampire' to come and surrender himself to them in exchange."
"Uncle Gerhard had a wonderful idea to say he was the head vampire and he would exchange himself for the girl, but they didn't believe he was." Continues her brother. "The three of them couldn't figure out how to get the situation resolved so Eric and Marie were going to go back to find me and the rest of the Family that had to have made it back across from the island by then-" The end of Johns statement is cut off by the principles secretary shoving her head in the door.
"Sir, your daughter is on the phone for you."
"Oh, thank you Lin I'll get right on that." responds the principle. His secretary pulls her head back out the door. He looks back to the two in his office. "I'm sorry to interrupt this, but I have to take this call." He sighs and gives a smile. "I swear, her mother should never have taught her how to use a phone and especially my work number. She calls me at least three times a day when my wife isn't looking."
"It is perfectly fine." Responds John nonchalantly. "We'd be happy to finish at another time."
"It would be much appreciated. Thank you both for coming here today!" he says enthusiastically at the end. "It's good to see the Family every once in a while." Mr. Brandon holds out his hand.
John stands up out of his seat and shakes the principles hand. "It sure is nice to be out and about meeting new people." John says as he lets go of the principles hand. Sara, with a much relieved look on her face, stands up and does the same as John.
"I had a lot of fun playing with those kids and I am very relieved I do not have to finish this bit of history all in one sitting."
The principle chuckles at this. "I could tell. It was really awkward to listen to. Now I hope the two of you have a nice day and give my regards to your brother."
"We will and thank you for your time." John responds and turns to walk out.
"Ciao." Sara laughs, gives the principle a wink and a half salute, and flits out the door in the blink of an eye before her brother fully turns toward it.
"Does she always do that?" Asks Mr. Brandon.
"Yeah, she is always flying around. Sara is the fastest of the Blue-Eyed Family. Maybe more than any of us." John grins and continues. "We have never actually clocked how fast she is, be she did once go on a hunting trip with a friend and her father. She helped her friend track down the deer and her friend shot it. We can think much faster than a human can, 'specially when our adrenaline is going," John takes a breath. "Because of this time seems to slow down around us, yet we can still understand what is going on. It's a natural response to help us when we move so fast. Sara can and was thinking, reacting, and moving fast enough to follow the track of the bullet with her eyes and had enough time still to decide she wanted to catch the bullet as it sped away from her and her friend. She didn't catch it be she says she almost laid a hand on it."
"That's astonishing. If I didn't know the Family existed I wouldn't believe it possible."
Sara flits back into the room, startling the principle. "Sorry to barge back in, but your secretary asked me to tell you your daughter is starting to get pouty."
"Oh I almost forgot." He picks up his desk phone and pushes a glowing button on it. He waves goodbye to them as he greets his daughter. "Hi honey! How has your day been so far?"
John and Sara make their way out of the office and past the secretary to the hallways beyond.

*